sailracer6's Journal: Reading and being

This past year, and, indeed, much of the one before that, had been a long dry spell for me and reading, relatively speaking. I allowed myself to get bogged down, first in Tolkien esoterica like the Silmarillion and Book of Lost Tales, and then I wallowed through what is supposed to be Thomas Pynchon's magnum opus, Gravity's Rainbow. That mess took me four months to get through, and I probably got less out of it than from his Crying of Lot 49, which is less than one-seventh the length and one-tenth the insanity.

After that experience, I guess I had lost about all dedication to reading, especially as I've let the Internet and DVDs (anime... drugs would be cheaper) take over. About a month ago, though, I had a late night AIMversation with a friend, who let me go on about literature for longer and freer than I have in a long time, and it's inspired me to get back into the saddle (so to speak). So, thank you.

This break I've read 3 admittedly short books: a collection of Kafka, Huxley's Brave New World, and that new book everyone's talking about, The DaVinci Code. I thought DaVinci Code was so terrible that I'm going to write up a review and post it here shortly.

Does anyone have suggestions for what I should read next? Next in my queue so far are Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Shakespeare... as much as I can handle. Any suggestions? Leave a comment, I know some of you have Slashdot IDs already ;)